Page 46 of The Secret Christmas Bookshop
‘You must miss The Book Ends,’ she said gently. She didn’t know if it was forbidden ground, but he’d been so much more open in the pub.
‘I do,’ he admitted. ‘It was this strange mix of organized and haphazard; you never knew what you were going to find in any of the rooms, but if you wanted something specific, either it would be there or Dad would order it in.’
‘You didn’t want to take it over?’
‘I couldn’t,’ he said simply. ‘I had to be in London.’
He looked towards the seafront, and Sophie followed his gaze. The water was a black hole, except for the silver pathway cast across it by the moon, picking out the white of the foam-topped waves.
‘Everyone loved my dad,’ he said. ‘He was always ready with a kind word or a joke, and he had an immense knowledge of books. He ordered whatever people wanted immediately, so they had it in days. He came across as generous and competent, but …’ Harry shook his head. ‘In the last few years he’d run the bookshop into the ground, he was in so much debt he was about to lose the shopandthe manor, and I didn’t have a choice. People say there’s always a choice, that you can make anything work if you really want to, but willpower – justwantingsomething – won’t win over real life and all the barriers you’re faced with.’
Sophie knew about barriers. She knew that wanting to be part of a family didn’t make it happen, that you couldn’tjust wish it into existence, just as you couldn’t make somewhere your home if it didn’t feel right, and you couldn’t hold on to love if the other person didn’t want it as much as you. ‘What are your barriers?’ she asked quietly.
‘Money, expectation, reputation, rules. Desire can’t overrule all those things.’ His voice was gruff, as if he was holding in his emotions, and Sophie thought how hard it must have been, to deal with the financial mess his father had left, while everyone in Mistingham thought his dad was the good guy and Harry the villain. And, although she knew he was talking about desire in general terms, she could only think of one kind: a kind that was totally inappropriate because of May. But, being this close to him in the dark, his body warm against hers, the laughter from his goat stories echoing in her head, she couldn’t help it.
‘But you still love books,’ she said, dragging herself onto safer ground.
‘I’ll always love books.’
‘Me too,’ she murmured. ‘Have you heard of The Secret Bookshop?’
‘TheSecretBookshop? No, what is that?’
‘I’ve had this … this bookgiven to me, and I have no idea who did it. It’s a random, anonymous gift.’
‘What do you mean? Which book?’ He sounded so perplexed that Sophie knew Fiona was wrong: there was no way Harry was behind her copy ofJane Eyre.
So, instead of pursuing her mystery, she decided to be bold. ‘Why can’t we hold the Christmas festival close to the oak tree?’
Harry looked away, his breath puffing a cloud into the night air. ‘Dad was so cavalier with everything,’ he said.‘The shop, the estate, money. Me and my sister Daisy, even. He did whatever he wanted to, believed everything would justwork outsomehow, even when it started falling apart. I think it was how he dealt with his grief, after my mum died. Denial was his default, but …’ He turned to face her. ‘I had a survey done on the oak when I moved back here, and they said it was unstable: that it could be compromised if it’s messed about with too much.’
Sophie gave him a gentle smile. ‘So you’d rather nobody went near it? Looked at it, enjoyed it, but from a distance? Preserve the tree, but stop everyone using the green that surrounds it?’
‘Soph—’
‘Do you really think a few fairy lights strung through its branches are going to bring it tumbling down? That people walking near it will make it collapse?’
He shut his eyes. ‘It’s over four-hundred years old. It’s sheltered people from the rain, been home for countless insects and birds.’
Sophie squeezed his arm. ‘My very favourite foster mum, Mrs Fairweather, once told me that it was better to enjoy things and make use of them, rather than keep them carefully shut up and save them for the perfect moment. She said that the perfect moment might never come and, by waiting for it, you end up missing out instead.’
‘She sounds wise,’ Harry said. ‘How long did you live with her?’
‘Only a couple of years. She retired when I was seventeen, after a long, exhausting career of making lost kids feel cherished. I owe her so much, and I trust the things she told me.’ She looked up at Harry. ‘Your dad may havemanaged his finances badly, and caused you a whole load of grief in the process, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong about everything. Jazz was saying how important community is, how it’s better for people to be too close than distant, and I thought we could incorporate that into the festival: bring the community into it as much as possible.’
Now she’d said it aloud, she knew it made sense. ‘The best way to do that would be to use the green and the village hall, have indoor and outdoor activities: pot-luck food, some kind of games tournament, an open-mic night.’
‘An open-micnight?’
‘What’s more community-spirited than that? Then everyone who wants to be part of the performancecanbe. It would be sogood, Harry. Come on.’ She was bouncing on her feet now. ‘The oak tree would love to be at the heart of it. Think how many village events it must have presided over. You can’t take that away from it.’
Harry started walking again. ‘Andyoucan’t anthropomorphize a tree and expect me to change my mind.’
‘You think it’s a great idea – admit it.’ She grinned at him, then couldn’t stop a huge yawn escaping. She turned her head away and covered her mouth.
‘Right,’ Harry said decisively. ‘Time for bed.’
Her gaze shot to his. But he hadn’t meant that. Ofcoursehe hadn’t.
